


Role Reversal

by WinterDreams



Series: Lifeguard Verse [3]
Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Alcohol, Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Happy Ending, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, North is just not having a good night basically, One Shot, Underage Drinking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-14
Updated: 2015-04-14
Packaged: 2018-03-22 09:55:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,671
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3724537
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WinterDreams/pseuds/WinterDreams
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“What the fuck is your problem? It’s–” She pulls back her phone to check the time. “–three in the fucking morning! Is this some kind of stupid prank idea from that party?”</p>
<p>“South,” he just says again, and then laughs.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Role Reversal

**Author's Note:**

> Can be read as a stand-alone fic. Can be read as part of Lifeguard verse, and is referenced in dialogue between the twins in chapter 15.

The insistent buzzing of her cell phone drags South from sleep, and for a groggy moment, she thinks it’s her alarm for class going off. But when she pries open her eyes, her room is pitch black and her roommate is still in her bed. South fumbles to press the phone to her ear, not even bothering to lift her head from her pillow.

“Fuck is this?” she asks, words slurring out of her yawning mouth.

There’s silence on the other end beyond someone’s heavy breathing. Frustration rises in her, for she might not have seen the exact time, but she can guess by this point it’s not an hour she should be up at unless she’s drinking. “You’ve got three seconds before I hang up this fucking phone. One–”

“South.” Her name, but she doesn’t recognize the strangled voice that says it. A second of breathless laughter follows it and then her name again.

South finally lifts her head so she can glare at the caller ID on her phone. She winces in the sudden bright light and the caller ID has her scowl deepening.

“North?” she demands.

“South,” he parrots back at her, and she now recognizes notes of his familiar voice beneath the layer of choking abnormality coating it.

“What the fuck is your problem? It’s–” She pulls back her phone to check the time. “–three in the fucking morning! Is this some kind of stupid prank idea from that party?”

“South,” he just says again, and then laughs. This time his laugh has her sitting up with something akin to dread pricking at her bare skin. It’s none of the laughs South is used to hearing, and it’s not even his dopy, loud, drunk laugh. “Irony, you know? So irony.”

He’s slurring his words like he’s drunk, which would make sense given he is supposed to be at some party with his new friends. It has taken him the first two months of first year to finally go out, whereas South has been boozing it up from the first week.

“What’s ironic?” South asks.

She thinks she hears the sound of a car driving by on North’s end rather than the obnoxious chatter and vibrating music she would expect from a party.

“Dunno where I am,” North finally mumbles, though his words are a lot mushier in their clarity than normal.

“You _what_?”

“Dunno,” he repeats, and this time South definitely hears the sound of traffic.  

“Why the fuck aren’t you at the party?” she asks even when she’s already getting out of bed and feeling in the dark for her purse and jacket.

“Dunno.”

“Well are your dumbass friends with you?”

There’s a pause, as if North is physically looking around to see if his friends had just been there the whole time.

“No.”

“They just left you?”

South has found her stuff by that point, but her keys aren’t in her purse. She gropes at the surface of her desk until she finds them, roommate still sleeping soundly in her own bed.

“I can’t–everything’s foggy.”

“Those fucking assholes,” South swears, resolving to kick them all in the crotch next chance she gets.

Then she will tell North to get new friends who won’t pull shit like this when North had no doubt spent the entire night making sure they were okay. Hell, South will never let a clearly intoxicated or drugged friend go wandering off into the night, and North is the protective one.

“Okay, I’m coming to pick you up now,” South tells him.

She pauses in her doorway before hurrying back to grab one of her large sweaters for North. The door slams shut behind her when she exits, and she storms down the halls of her residence.

“S’okay. Can walk.”

“You don’t even fucking know where you are, dumbass,” South reminds him.

Smashing the button of the elevator is not nearly satisfying enough, and she taps her foot as she waits. She waits about three seconds before heading to the stairs. “And why’d you call me if you didn’t want my fucking help?”

“Dizzy,” North replies, and South has no idea if that is the answer to her question or an update on his current status.

“Okay, North, I need you to focus for me,” South says, and she’s sprinting for her car now, terrified he’ll pass out on her before she can get some marker of his location. “Are there any street signs near you? Or any people you can ask for help?”

“Uhhhh.”

“North, focus!” she snaps.

The engine rumbles to life and she quickly puts her phone on speaker. South doesn’t pull out of the parking lot right away, gaze going to her phone as her grip tightens on the steering wheel.

She grabs her phone as North gets out an incoherent string of syllables. South texts a mutual friend who was supposed to have been at the party while telling North to repeat what he said.

_Do u know where North is?_ She texts, a little of her anger subsiding when she gets a reply right away.

_No? He okay?_

_He’s fucked. Trying to figure out where he is but he’s not making sense._

_Shit. He disappeared b4 us. Wasn’t being clear_ – _s_ _mth about a McDonalds?_

Just like that, all of South’s anger returns full force and she has to resist the urge to scream. She’s no longer ten years old, when her verbal expression of her rage and the screams that went with it had been seen as an acceptable response.

“You’re going to be okay, North,” she says to her brother instead. “Just keep talking to me, okay?”

He says something that sounds like an apology as South types out a reply to her friend.

_Where’s the closest McDonalds?_ She doesn’t say, _why the fuck didn’t you stop him if you saw how fucked he was you bitch_ like she wants to.

_Dundas @ Queens_

South places her phone on the dashboard rather than flinging it like she wants to, and pulls out of the parking lot.

“North? Can you see a McDonalds anywhere near you?” His pause has her afraid he’s passed out already, but then he’s humming.

“See yellow sign,” he says, and then he’s laughing again in that way that sounds like a gasp and a sob mixed in one. “Oh fuck.”

“North?”

“Fucked up,” he’s muttering. “Fucked up, South. Fucked up, fucked up–”

“You’re gonna be fine, North, okay? Hear me? Just fine?”

She stops at a red and grabs her phone to send the message,

_WHAT THE FUCK DID HE HAVE_

The reply takes a while, vibrating her phone when she pulls into the McDonalds' parking lot.

_Idk??_ The reply reads, and South leaps out of her car. _Looked like typical booze. He was watching friends’ and their drinks more than his. Maybe someone fucked with it. Drugs or put in more alcohol or some shit._

South isn’t sure who she wants to shout at more in that moment; North’s friends for leaving him when North would have made sure all of them got home safe, the assholes who think messing with peoples’ drinks is funny, or North for being so concerned over another’s safety that he forgot to be as careful with his own.

“North?” she says into the phone, settling for just getting her twin back for the moment. “Are you close to the yellow sign?”

“Uh-huh.”

South looks around, but there are too many side streets. She puts her phone down and then screams North’s name as loud as she can.

“Did you hear that?”

“What?”

She bites back a frustrated scream when the laughter of a young couple reminds her she is technically in a public parking lot. She tries to picture a map in her mind of all the routes North could have taken from the party to the McDonalds, but she can’t get a clear picture.

“You can see the yellow sign, right?” she asks, and her twin responds in the affirmative. She can only pray the yellow sign is actually the McDonalds' sign, and she gets back into her car. “Okay, North, I need you to stay exactly where you are. I’m going to drive up and down these streets, so wave at the car if you see me, okay?”

She’s pretty sure he’s not going to remember those instructions and she begins to drive up and down every street that branches away from the McDonalds. There’s no other method she can think of, but she gets lucky. Luckier, she supposes. It takes her another twenty minutes to find him, but he’s not passed out yet and she could have gotten worse luck and never found him.

He’s sitting on the curb when she reaches him. In the dark, South nearly misses his hunched over form, but she slams on her brakes the second she makes out the vaguely humanoid form. When she says his name into the phone, the figure looks up.

The car door bursts open and then she’s running as he struggles to climb to his feet without falling flat on his face. When she gets to him, she doesn’t hesitate to throw her arms around him and he slumps into her. He smells fucking horrible, the scent of booze and sweat clinging to his clothes and damp strands of hair. He’s shaking and his pupils are huge when she pulls away to get a better look at him,

There’s a loud clatter, and she starts. His phone has slipped from his grip, and South reaches down to pick up the pieces. North sways, and she slings one of his arms around her shoulders.

“I’ve got you,” she says, and his head rolls onto her shoulder.

They make their way over to the car slowly, North collapsing into the front passenger seat the second South gets the door open. South stands outside for a moment, hand resting on the metal door and gaze going to the yellow sign of the McDonalds hovering above the house tops in the cold, fall air.

“We’re gonna make a pit-stop,” she tells him. She gets the sweater on him first, and then drives them back to the McDonalds’ parking lot. She goes inside and returns with a cup of water clutched in her hand.

She makes North take five sips before pulling out onto the street.

“Thanks,” he mutters, but that’s all he gets out before he’s clutching at his stomach. For a second South wonders if she should take him to the hospital, despite their underage status, but he’s still conscious.

South heads to the parking lot of her residence instead.

“Warn me if you’re gonna hurl,” she says, and North just groans.

They make it to the sidewalk in front of South’s residence, and then North pitches forward to upheave the contents of his stomach. Some of it splatters on his shoes, and South has to grab his shoulder to keep him from falling into it.

“It’s too fucking cold for this,” South mutters.

She gets North to crouch so she can return to the car to grab the plastic bag he keeps in there in case of emergencies. Once it’s in his hands, South hauls him up and drags him into the building. This time she takes the elevator, arm wrapped around North’s waist to keep him somewhat upright as he vomits into the bag in intervals.

North stumbles to the bathroom as soon as South gets the door of her room open. She tumbles after him to keep him from smacking his head against the toilet and from dropping the bag of vomit. South wrinkles her nose at the smell, setting it in the garbage can for the moment and then spraying the room with Febreeze.

South turns on the bathroom lights and gets a relatively clean cup from her room to fill with water. Her roommate is somehow still asleep, but it’s for the best. South might snap the girl’s neck in that moment if she had asked any stupid questions.

North is still throwing up when South returns, but he’s groaning in between each upchuck now. He’s shaking harder than before, muscles trembling when South reaches out to grip his shoulder.

“M’okay,” he manages to get out, and South doesn’t know whether to laugh or smack him. “You go to sleep, South. M’sorry for waking you.”

“Shut the fuck up,” she snaps.

He starts to laugh, _real_ laughter this time, but vomit interrupts. She starts rubbing his back like their mom and him always used to do for her when she was little and sick. Eventually the vomiting subsides, leaving North’s body slumped over the toilet bowl as he continues to shake. South pushes strands of hair out of his face and his shut eyes that have liquid in their corners.

“You done, you think?” South asks. She always underestimates just how much one person can vomit.

North nods, and then manages to lift his head out of the toilet bowl. Instead of trying to stand, he attempts to move closer to her, half-falling into her lap. She tugs at him until the side of his head is resting on one of her shoulders and the rest of his limp body is slumped in her lap. She stretches up to flush the toilet but then lets herself lean back against the wall and remain in position. She uses her arms to keep North in place, knowing her twin loves receiving physical affection from every person in his life, but doesn’t begrudge her lack of it.

In the sudden silence, all she can hear is the sound of their breathing and the rattling of her room’s heater. North doesn’t try to move, just presses closer to her, and South lets him. With the lighting, it looks like he has bruises beneath his eyes and his skin is even paler than normal. Exhaustion drips from every slack muscle in a way he rarely lets show around others when he’s conscious. Even around South, he always has to be the strong, protective one.

South is better than anyone at seeing through her twin’s bullshit, but she hasn’t been paying attention for a while. The start of university in a new city where no one sees her and automatically associates her with North has thrilled her. North, in a different program and residence from her, has reached out to a new social circle as well, and so neither could feel abandoned or jealous. But North has continued to play the protective role he always had, calling and messaging her to see if she was okay, listening to her and teasing her when she raged or ranted.

“Dumbass,” South mutters, for North hasn’t done the same.

He hasn’t vented as he should, and South hasn’t been there to provide the outlet he always tries to pretend he doesn’t need. Which means he has been worrying about her, his douchebag friends who needed to die in a hole, and whatever bullshit issues their constantly fighting parents are dumping on him that South refuses to touch.

“Such a fucking dumbass,” South repeats, but tightens her grip on him.

“Wha?” North doesn’t open his eyes, but he shifts a little.

“I called you a dumbass for always acting like people can’t fucking take care of themselves and getting in this kind of shit cause of it.

North lifts his head, but she just shakes her own at him. Even she can’t be angry all the time, and the fear she felt only an hour ago has fled with North’s presence, leaving only exhausted relief behind.

“C’mon,” she says. “My ass is freezing.”

South drags North to his feet, though he’s barely conscious at this point. She half-drags, half-carries him to her bed where she tosses him without ceremony. She shoves and prods at his limbs until there’s space for her, and then South curls beside North beneath the blankets like they always used to as children.

**Author's Note:**

> I actually used to really dislike the Dakota twins when I first watched RvB (especially South, probably because I am the eldest sibling and because of what happened in Recovery One). Then I rewatched the episodes where they are first introduced in season 9 and now I absolutely adore them, and I will be forever upset over what the project did to their relationship. Therefore, South taking care of North drabble was required.


End file.
